a look into the healing properties of ▆▆▆'s power
[prelude]
...some notes from the "White Book"! Will you read it?
>Yes
when I started this second comic, it was primarily to address these plot beats GameFreak left in their writing of the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Epilogue that I found to be "immersion-breaking":
why didn't the protag tell anyone about Kieran? (my answer: they had to keep it a secret)
why did the protag travel from Kitakami to trigger the epilogue, then fly back to Paldea real quick before going back barely a week later? (I can't justify it for GameFreak lol so for me there are two protags and one of them was already in Kitakami, while the other got the call from Arven.)
I know in game this was done from a gameplay perspective, but it's fun to imagine an intricate story and reasoning for all this :] With this, my version of events can still play out in the games themselves without being too au-y. (It's even in-line with my previous pkmn art, which I'm semi-particular about.)
Of course, it was also to give my version of Florian and Juliana as well as Nemona some form of closure. I wasn't planning on healing them, but a kind comment from someone led me to this little brief passion project. Although the characters aren't mine, they seem to have taken hold of me anyway, driving me to finish telling their story.
Making this was what I call "wish-fulfillment" art. It has shippy elements, a bunch of specific exposition a nerd like me would care about, JP text for a character raised in fictional rural Japan that I'm aware not many would enjoy as I do? Or, idk. It's fanservice for me alone, and it was extremely fulfilling to draw, which is what matters. Believe it or not, it's been a while since I've been unapologetically able to enjoy drawing like this.
Basically, I blacked out and boom. These silly guys took over my life. I enjoyed it. I hope you guys do too.
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the ending of episode five fucked me up because they're all healing, stede and ed are healing, realistically, in love, as both individuals and as partners. izzy is happy! fucking happy! he has friends, family, people who love him and care about him. people that stuck with ed and izzy through dark fucking times but are still willing to stick with them because that's what you do as a crew.
i don't think anyone's waiting for me
no one's waiting for me. no one. every single person i have ever cared about has left me. every. single. one. 100% probability that i will be abandoned. because when it comes down to it, i'm too much. doesn't matter what specifically did it this time, it all falls under "you're too much to deal with so i'm ditching you". i'm saying this as neutrally as possible btw. i'm forced to live for myself because there is no one else and that is both a little bit of a good thing and a giant pile of 'fucking shoot me already'.
this entire season i just stabbing me right into my most sensitive trauma memories over and over again, and i'm bleeding out on the roadside and about to be run over by a car.
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I saw some confusion among people thinking that Eramis' appearance was random and that she had no business being on the station with access to the Warsats. I'd like to try and clarify some stuff about that.
Eramis was a constant presence this season; more so than Xivu Arath. It has been explained that Xivu Arath cannot invade with her army until the specifics of a ritual are fulfilled and that moving her army through the ascendant plane takes an extraordinary amount of energy and resources.
Some of Xivu's forces were here and acting on her behalf, yes, but largely the main enemy this season was Eramis. Eramis is already in the system and was very explicitly used by the Witness as the one who would act often and faster. The Witness spent a lot of time turning Eramis' friends and soldiers into Scorn for this purpose.
These Scorn are the ones that had the Seraph Station under constant siege. Every time we attack Seraph Station, it's canon because Scorn come back to life so every time we clear it, we have to do it anew. They've been digging in the Station for months, trying to gain access to the Warsat network and preparing for the final assault.
Eramis was not randomly on the Seraph Station; she was there because she's been trying to get there for months. We were fighting their attempts by uploading a virus into the network each time we're there, but that's never been a certain way of stopping Eramis and the Scorn army from wrestling control over the network away. Which is the point of us having to do it multiple times.
I know the Seraph's Shield mission only played dialogue once so if anyone needs a refresher:
Elsie Bray: I've gained remote access to the launch facility's subsystems, but someone is already in here. House Salvation Splicers are hacking the launch mainframe.
Eramis had splicers working on hacking into the station. As a matter of fact, they gained access to the station first.
Ana Bray: She's here? Of course. That must be how Xivu Arath plans of co-opting the Warsat network. The Hive can't do it on their own, so the Witness sends Eramis and her Splicers in to assist.
Ana explaining how Eramis being there makes sense because Xivu cannot gain access to the Warsats on her own, she needs Eramis to assist.
The whole seasonal story hinges on Eramis hacking the station to get to the Warsats and the Seraph's Shield mission was explicitly about us trying to stop her week by week. It just so happens that she succeeded hacking it at the end, before Rasputin was fully operational and ready to be uploaded without negative consequences.
Is the setup a little bit clunky? I think so, yeah, because the whole season is doomed from the start. We have to stop our enemies but it's the nature of the end-of-the-year story for enemies to win in some capacity. I also think that we didn't really have to kill Rasputin for the same effect and for the enemies to somehow get the upper hand; I think it would've been fine if Rasputin simply had to destroy the Warmind stuff but that he could've remained with us as an Exo.
But Eramis having access to Seraph Station and the Warsat network is not random or out of nowhere nor is it nonsensical. That was her entire plan the whole season. Actually her first big win, possibly also saved her life. Not sure how many failures from Eramis the Witness would've tolerated.
I guess the issue is that with the current seasonal structure, we expect the seasonal goal to be fulfilled and for us to walk happily into the sunset until the next season because that's how it worked so far. It can feel like we've been fighting our enemies for 3 months for nothing given that we've essentially failed and it almost caused a catastrophe. But I'm not sure how else to create a story (seasonal or otherwise) where things don't go as planned or where we fail.
There were multiple fronts to fight on this season and there's one where we dodged a massive bullet; Xivu Arath. We lost to Eramis because we had to think about the bigger picture and that is Xivu's invasion. Our loss to Eramis also took the Warsats out of the equation now so that's also a loss to Xivu. It's what we needed; a stalemate. It's not flashy or happy, but it's better than the alternative which is Xivu Arath's portal over Earth. So in that regard we succeeded. We lost the Warsats and Rasputin and almost the Traveler, but all of that was to prevent Xivu Arath from invading which we managed. For now.
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